A water-darkened day, a genuine heaven-faller, and over there? Warmth, hay, a horse perhaps? Horse rides ought to be planned beforehand, but the loving sun promised pleasure for all the day until it ran off. That sort of capricious behavior the man who shivered his way into the stable expected more from celestial beings than from neighborhood bright eyes, but he had many mistakes left to make.
The hay was there, and the warmth, but not a musty horse-warmth, but the stinging kind from man-sanctioned flames that played around and threatened to run wild but knew their place too well to extract concessions from concerned stable hands. The stable hands had no concerns at all given the horse-poorness of the scene, though human-richness made up for it.
"I suppose there is no chance of doing business, then?" The man's fishing expedition went as well as such things usually go. The stable hands all shook their heads, even popping out from stalls and around corners to make ripples all over the fishless pond, a glittering thing where it was not in shadow, a dark thing where the light was not. "When might you be expecting a horse to be returned?"
"Expecting?" One of the hands expectorated, but only he knew if that was wordplay. "We don't expect around here. No horse coming back, not for the length of your thread. Offer up a chicken or a pheasant for that. How'd you even get in here?"
"The door."
"Huh." The stable hands walked with the low steps of men with no place to be and examined the door. "Huh huh huh. You a sage? Enchanter?"
"Why, I can't say that I am, no."
"Might be now. Have a nice day."
The man left, and he never saw one of those horses, and he never learned sagecraft either, though he did conquer the world, and after he died the horses came.
Finis
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